Category Archives: Rice

I announced it already, but to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the rubble, Pantry Party still exists but July and August themes will be combined. What I mean to say in more concise language is that I’m extending the RICE Pantry Party round-up to occur end of August. You now have until August 28th to get your rice recipes in. The rice doesn’t need to be the star of the dish, but it does need to be used.

I’m sure I’ll make more rice before August 28th, because I eat rice a lot. I usually eat it just plain with curry on top of it, but for my theme entry I decided to make something different.

The flavors in the rice and the chicken melded together so well. I was very happy with how this dish turned out. I didn’t really do what I had intended with the rice – instead I took the lazy man route and dumped everything in the rice cooker. While I use the rice cooker frequently, I’ve never used it like this. I was skeptical and was convinced we’d be going to get hamburgers after the rice failed, but it actually came out perfect. I guess lazy works sometimes.

1. Combine the garlic, white wine, 1 tbsp olive oil, vinegar, apple juice, and salt together in a small dish. Pour over the chicken. Cover the chicken and marinate for at least a half hour.

2. Heat the remaining 1 tbsp of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high. Remove the chicken from the marinade using a slotted spoon. Discard the remaining marinade. Place in the hot oil in a single layer. Cook for 3 minutes, until browned on one side. Then stir fry for 3 more minutes or until the chicken is cooked all the way through. Remove the chicken from the pan.

3. Add the onion to the pan on medium-high. Cook for 2 minutes, until the onion begins to brown. Spoon the onions over the chicken.

This month the movie at Food ‘n Flix was very different than the one I hosted last month. Instead of a French dystopian movie, this month’s movie is a documentary about a Japanese sushi chef. Camilla is our host this month, having picked this documentary with its beautiful shots of sushi.

If anyone knows sushi, it’s Jiro. But frankly, this movie didn’t inspire me to make sushi – it terrified me. I’ve never done it before, so I knew any attempt from me would be laughable. I can just see it. It’s embarrassing even in my head. Maybe one day I’ll try sushi, but then not document my failure, because who wants everyone to see that? Being that Jiro is a huge perfectionist, I think he would have appreciated my refrain from trying to participate in his art.

In the film, Yamamoto tells us that there are five attributes of a great chef:

1. Take your work seriously
2. Aspire to improve
3. Maintain cleanliness
4. Be a better leader than a collaborator
5. Be passionate about your work

I am not a cook. I am an amateur that cooks for myself and my boyfriend. I enjoy food, but I am no cook. But I find these attributes so important to employ in all fields of work, to be a good lawyer I’ll need many of those traits as well. The only that might not quite apply is 4, because I think leaders also need to collaborate, but those five attributes can be applied to more than just cooks.

Be passionate.

—

Anyway, because I did not feel inspired to make sushi, I took it and ran with it a bit. I decided I’d use all the things I love in sushi and make a salad. Though I actually really love raw tuna in my sushi (along with other raw fish,) I’m not sure of where I could get fish fresh enough to eat raw and I didn’t want to chance severe sickness. I instead made tempura with shrimp and green beans. Considering my favorite sushi roll is the spider roll (with fried soft shell crab, yumm!) making tempura for my sushi salad seemed appropriate.

1. Marinate the shrimp in the white wine and 1/4 tsp of salt for 20 minutes.

2. Mix together flour, ice water, cornstarch, egg yolk, sugar, 1 tsp of the shortening, baking powder, and 1/4 tsp of salt. Once well mixed, coat the shrimp and the green beans with the batter.

3. Heat the shortening in a cast iron skillet or a wok. Once hot add the shrimp and the green beans, in batches, a few at a time. Cook the shrimp about 3 minutes per side, until golden brown. Flip and cook for about 3 more minutes on the other side. Continue until all the shrimp and green beans are fried. Let drain on a paper towel.

4. Put your salad together in a bowl. Add 1/2 cup of rice in each bowl. Surround with the cucumber and carrot pieces. Top with half of the tempura per bowl. Top with avocado and nori.

This month at this blog’s monthly Pantry Party, the theme is soup! Essentially the goal is to look into your pantry and make a dish that meets the theme with at least one (or more!) things found in your pantry. This month I relied on two pantry items to make soup.

– Rice
– Green tea

I also now have a new addition to my pantry: nori.

I was skeptical of this dish when I first started. But I was intrigued by this recipe from Sunset magazine. The idea of my broth being green tea seemed so odd, but.. I had to try it! I ended up adding some soy sauce to the broth because I felt like it needed a salt element to it. The addition of the soy sauce was perfect. I was so full after this bowl of soup.

1. In a rice cooker, cook the rice with 1/4 tsp of salt according to the rice cooker instructions.

2. Preheat the broiler. Rub your broiler pan with oil. Put your fish on the broiler pan and turn the fish over on the pan to get oil on both sides. Sprinkle remaining salt on the fish. Broil 3-4 inches away from the broiler until cooked through (when the fish flakes), about 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.

3. Bring 4 cups of water to boil, either in a pot or a teapot. Once boiling add the tea bags and let steep for 5 minutes. Remove the bags and stir in the soy sauce.

4. To pull your dish together, put 1 cup of rice into each bowl. Place a fish fillet on top of the rice. Pour half of the broth into each bowl. Garnish with green onions and nori.

As I’ve been home for the holidays, spending more time with my mom and dad since I have since college, I’ve been helping my mom a lot around the kitchen. It’s been nice to cook for more than just two people. My childhood friend was also staying with us, so there was my mom, my dad, my brother, my friend, and myself to cook for over the last week. We had big breakfasts almost everyday and nice dinners most nights. It was nice to be home to welcome 2013 with my family.

This wasn’t our last meal of 2012 though. My last meal of 2012 was a bowl of ramen noodles from a restaurant in Japantown. This risotto was from earlier in the week. We had this risotto, a salad, and a beef shank stuffed with apples and celery.

I love the sweet potato in the risotto so much. It was a great combination.

Since Monday this week was a holiday, I had time to make dinner and didn’t need to rely on the slow cooker. But just because Monday allowed enough time to make dinner, Tuesday still did not. Because of this, I knew I needed to make enough dinner Monday to have on Tuesday and also to change the dish up a bit so I could have it two ways.

Clearly I’m not very good at keeping up with challenges I keep for myself (as you can see my 52 Week Around the World Challenge) ended short, but at least through this semester there should be a dish a week that I make two ways just because my schedule sort of forces it.

This fried rice made use of the crystallized ginger Rose sent me a few months ago in my Foodie Pen Pal box. Because it was cut up very fine, it wasn’t overpowering but to get a piece of that sweet ginger was excellent in the rice.

Day 2 got a bowl of fried rice soup, which was an easy way to make the dish into something else. In retrospect though, it could have used more broth.

1. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until medium. Combine the eggs and pour into the skillet. Cook, stirring, until scrambled, about 1 minute. Break into small pieces and transfer to a bowl.

2. Add another tbsp of oil. Add the onion and the garlic to the pan, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the shrimp and peas. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through, about 3 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the eggs.

3. Heat the remaining tbsp of oil in the skillet of medium-high heat until hot. Add the rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until crispy.

4. Stir together the soy sauce, white wine, ginger, and sesame oil. Add to the skillet along with the egg. Cook until heated through.

5. DAY 1 INSTRUCTIONS: Serve as is.DAY 2 INSTRUCTIONS: Heat the chicken broth and the rice in a large pot until simmering. When warm, serve.

I have a thing about lunches. I hate leftovers. I don’t really like sandwiches unless they’re purchased from a deli and the only thing I did in the creation of the sandwich was fork over some money. I really like my lunches to be just as delicious as my dinners – just different from my dinners.

My coworkers go out to eat so often. I really save money eating the way I do and I probably end up being a lot more satisfied than they are. When school starts next week I’m going to make sure I bring lunch with me on those days I’m on campus all day also, because cafeteria food and my stomach don’t always make the best pair.

This was actually intended to be a soy sauce marinated pork chop, but I didn’t realize how low we were on soy sauce and didn’t buy any. Unfortunately by the time pork chop night came, the soy sauce was all gone because the boyfriend dumped it on his rice on Black Pepper Chicken night. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what to use without going to the store and opted for the Worcestershire. I later realized I had teriyaki sauce I could have used, but the Worcestershire worked well and the chops were delicious!

1. Combine the ingredients in a ziplock bag. Squeeze the air out of the bag and seal. Shake the bag so the pork chops are covered. Put in the fridge for 20 minutes.

2. In a skillet heat up a little bit of oil. Cook long enough for the pork chops to brown on one side. Flip and let brown on the other side.

3. Cover with a lid, lower heat, and cook for 3 minutes.

4. Add any extra marinade to the skillet. Increase the heat. Once simmering, pour over the chops.

* serves 2
* 261 calories per serving

The rice was also a hit. I haven’t been very good about eating my veggies. I really need to do something about that, because I obviously need them. This rice dish was a nice way to incorporate veggies in without being a “veggie” dish.

2. Heat 1 tsp of oil in a skillet. Stir in the onion and garlic and cook until tender.

3. In a medium bowl blend the eggs and 1 tsp of Worcestershire sauce. Stir into the skillet and scramble with the garlic and onions. Remove the eggs from the skillet.

4. Heat the remaining oil. Place the mushrooms and celery in the skillet and cook until the mushrooms are tender and release liquid. Add the bamboo shoots, carrots, snow peas, and rice. Heat through. Then add the eggs and stir to combine

I first saw Sideways the year it had come out, back in 2005. My dad was sent to Blockbuster and told to get a comedy. He came back with Sideways. Being 18 years old and expecting something truly funny, I was not expecting the dark comedy he had brought home. We ended up turning it off.

Seeing it again these seven years later has made a mountain of a difference.

In Sideways two middle age men go on a trip through Southern California’s wine country. Honestly, until I saw this movie I had no idea that Southern California even had a wine country. I live in Sacramento, grew up in San Francisco, and went to college in Santa Cruz. I am very much a Northern California girl and always just thought of “wine country” as being Napa county. In fact, I have plans this summer to go wine tasting in Napa with several of my girl friends. I hope this happens because I’ve never gone wine tasting before. And I hope I’m not the driver.

For the recipe to share with Food ‘n Flix I decided to pick something and pair it with wine, since that was the overwhelming theme of the movie.

Here’s the problem. Well, there’s two. I don’t know much about wine and I’m cheap as hell. I originally googled what I should pair with a mushroom risotto and read that I should pair it with a Dolcetto. That sounds great and all, but the $20 bottle of wine from Bevmo really just wasn’t fitting this poor law student’s budget. Upon more searching I read that a chardonnay would be a good pair for this type of meal – and since the recipe called for dry white wine I decided I’d buy a wine, cook with it, and drink it.

This bottle of wine was about $10. I didn’t spit it out, so that’s a good sign.

It is a California wine, but not from the Santa Barbara area. This winery is actually in Sonoma County and is about an hour and a half away from where I live. This is definitely local wine. Though it was cheap, for this law student’s budget it was perfect. Websites indicate that “this Classic Sonoma County Chardonnay exhibits ripefruity flavors of pear, crisp green apple, vanilla and toasty caramel.” When it comes to wine I just taste fermented grapes, so what do I know.

I do like white wine more than red wine though – that is one thing I know. The reason though is because white wine doesn’t stain my lips and make me look drunk.

Risotto isn’t the easiest dish to make, but I think I pulled it off pretty well for this meal. Overall I was satisfied.

1. In a pot combine the mushrooms and the chicken broth. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and boil for 20 minutes. When it has finished boiling strain the mushrooms. Reserve the broth.

2. Bring another pot of water to a boil. Add the broccolini and cook for 3 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water.

3. Ina deep skillet melt the butter with olive oil. Cook the onions for about 3 minutes. Add the rice and toast for 3 more minutes.

4. Add wine and stir for 2 minutes.

5. As the liquid evaporates from the rice, add 1/2 cup of the reserved broth to the rice. Continue to cook, bringing to a low boil, stirring frequently. Continue to add more broth (or water if you run out of broth) as the liquid evaporates, stirring consistently. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is cooked.

This last semester of law school had me effectively fall off the planet. As of last night though I am now 66% done with law school – only one year left!

If this blog were actually entitled Law Student Eats or something (as opposed to it being my Cookbook) these last few months of food would be filled the nastiest foods ever. I have eaten a lot of hot dogs and chili fries, hamburgers, pizza, and Chinese food. I am not saying any of those are actually nasty, because they taste really good . . . But I have hardly been healthy and unfortunately I’ve noticed a major increase in my weight in the last few months. This is very disappointing given how much I lost last year. I don’t want it all to be for nothing, so it’s time I pull myself together again and start making meals that matter and reexplore my kitchen and have fun.

My around the world challenge, like I’ve mentioned, was entirely set-back by my hectic life. But I will be making those missed out ‘trips’ up starting next meal plan hopefully. If not, I do still plan to make 52 dishes from other countries – we will just see how it pans out.

My school work has really gotten in the way of cooking. I was also disappointed that I wasn’t able to participate in Food ‘n Flix last month because I just had no time to watch the movie. I already have my dish picked out though for this month’s movie, Sideways. I plan to make it Friday this week. I just need to go to the store and get some wine first. To participate in this fun event check it out here.

Now with that being said and all my talking out of the way, this pilaf was delicious. I usually mess rice up if it’s not cooked traditionally (or in a rice cooker.) This recipe was surprisingly simple, left me with fluffy (not burnt) rice, and tasted delicious.

2. Heat 1/2 tsp of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add sausages and cook, turning occasionally, for 10 minutes. Transfer to a plate and set aside.

3. Add 1/2 tsp of olive oil, onion, and garlic to the frying pan. Cook for 5 minutes, or until soft. Add the rice, and cook stirring for 1 minute. Transfer to an ovenproof dish. Place sausages on top of rice.

4. Add the remaining oil and mushrooms to the frying pan. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes, until the mushrooms begin to release liquid. Add the tomato and broth; bring to a boil. Pour over rice and stir to combine. Cover dish with tight-fitting lid.